This year's event took place on May 25 at the Killington Grand Hotel & Conference Center. See following for a summary of the trainings offered.

Spring Member Meeting & Training

Our Spring Member Meeting and Training Conference takes place in late May each year.

The day-long event features water quality industry exhibits, a variety of technical trainings, lunch, speakers, and a prize drawing for attendees. The day's agenda includes the annual GMWEA member meeting, at which members vote to elect new board directors and discuss organizational priorities and activities.

Spring Meeting is also when we present our annual water quality service excellence awards. We invite members to nominate individuals, facilities, and companies who demonstrated exceptional service in the year just passed.

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SPECIAL TRAINING 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Note: This course requires pre-registration by May 22, 2017.

The New Wave of Public Relations and Water/Wastewater Utilities

Public relations and crisis communications are often overlooked at the utility setting. By being proactive, however, a utility can establish positive and productive relationships with its customers, city/town officials and the general public as a whole. This course will provide the background necessary to start a utility off on the right foot with establishing a PR program, diving into the world of social media and planning ahead for communications in a crisis. Speaker: Kristen King, New England Water Works Association

Please note: This is an IACET certified course. You must attend all three hours of this course in order to receive training hour credits for it. Credit will NOT be prorated based on the number of hours you attend.

In an effort to control sea lamprey from further damaging Lake Champlain’s fish resources, the United States Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) proposed conducting a lampricide application in the LaPlatte River, which drains into Shelburne Bay. Since Champlain Water District’s (CWD) water supply is located in a deep-water canyon within Shelburne Bay there was the risk of the drinking water supply being contaminated with trifluoromethyl-4-nitrophenol (TFM), which is the contaminant of concern in the lampricide application. In order to ensure safe drinking water for the CWD-served population of 75,000, CWD installed a temporary powdered activated carbon (PAC) unit to remove any TFM that could be present in the lake intake water during the lampricide application. This presentation will discuss the planning, permitting, design, construction, and operation of the temporary PAC system that was utilized during the November 2016 LaPlatte River lampricide application. Speakers: Joe Duncan, Champlain Water District and Robert Dufresne, Dufresne Group

B) An Overview of the Untreated Sewage Treatment RuleSpeaker: David DiDomenico, State of VT, Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Watershed Management Division

Concurrent Sessions -- 10:15 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.

D) How Safe is Your SCADA System?

It's difficult to turn on a news program or read a newspaper these days without noting some story about yet another breach of security of a computer system. Yet, as we move through our daily tasks at work, how many of us are conscious of the threats to our SCADA system? A successful attack on the system could result in something as simple as a nuisance to be quickly remediated to something far more serious, adversely impacting public and/or environmental health, damaging infrastructure and equipment or loss of irreplaceable data. This session will review the structure of a SCADA system, present vulnerable points of entry into it, discuss potential threats to the system and propose remediation strategies. Speaker: Tom Allen, LCS Controls, Inc.

E) An Overview of the Lead and Copper Rule, Part I

These technical sessions will present and discuss the Federal Lead and Copper Rule including recent updates from the Environmental Protection Agency and improvements by the State of Vermont in order to maximize protection of public health. Topics to be addressed include how, when, and where to sample, what to do after a sample is taken, and how to address action level exceedances. Speakers: Ben Montross and Amy Galford, State of Vermont, Department of Environmental Conservation, Drinking Water and Groundwater Protection Division

Concurrent Sessions -- 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

G) The Future of Utility Metering Systems

Metering technology is changing so quickly. If you’re involved with your utility’s metering system, you’ll be amazed at where meters, Automatic Meter Reading(AMR), Advance Meter Infrastructure (AMI) and software are heading. We will discuss static water meters and registers. Have you heard about the future of drive-by and fixed network systems? How about software in the cloud? The idea behind this presentation is to alert you to some of the new technology being developed. Will your existing AMR or AMI system operate with future technology or will it be obsolete? Attend this training session and we’ll investigate the answers to all these questions together. Speaker: Don Ladd, Ti-Sales